Social Media Recruitment: Silver Bullet?

As the saying goes, you can take a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.

It’s very easy to get drawn into trying something new and expecting results within days. But whatever anyone says, there is no silver bullet. You should get involved in social media, because it can bring all sorts of benefits – but you can’t expect a complete turnaround of your HR hiring process.

If you take time to commit to social media properly, with a considered strategy and clear goals, you can expect increased web traffic, more networking opportunities, an increase in SEO performance and search rankings. But don’t play at it – don’t do it for a day or two, then get disappointed when sky-high expectations aren’t met.

Understand why you need good content – simply put, would you read something that was bland, boring, selfless, dreary, dull or just sold to you? Of course you wouldn’t. That sort of content will only be ignored, unread and never shared. Generating it will have been a waste of time.

Understand who you’re speaking to – aim to build a community around you, with you and your team as the foundation. Bring together your best ideas internally, aim to excite or interest your audience, then get out there and engage.

I train numerous people every year on how to use social media. I follow sessions up, I try to make people drink at the water hole, but if they are not interested they just won’t do it – nurture the ones who do, get them to enjoy and participate and reward them when they find a hire or add to your talent pool/CRM.